Alexa Keramidas

Alexa (ah-LEX-ah) is a licensed clinical psychologist who earned her bachelor’s at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign and completed her master’s and Ph.D. in counseling psychology at the University of Missouri – Kansas City. Alexa worked extensively with college students during her generalist training, completing her doctoral internship at UW Madison’s University Health Services, and a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Illinois Chicago’s Counseling Center.

Alexa is a relational, strengths-based therapist who emphasizes self-compassion, self-discovery, and empowerment in her work with clients. Known for her warm and friendly therapeutic style, Alexa strives to develop a mutual understanding of each client in their unique context, including the role of systems, culture, and identities in shaping their strengths and struggles. She specializes in anxiety, perfectionism, “impostor syndrome,” women’s issues, relationship challenges, and self-confidence. She also works with body image issues and mild disordered eating concerns from a Health At Every Size® approach.

Working with these concerns in therapy, Alexa believes that many of our “symptoms” are coping mechanisms that once helped us survive traumatic circumstances such as abusive relationships, oppression, or poverty. Although these coping strategies once allowed us to meet our needs under less-than-ideal circumstances, they may no longer serve us once our circumstances change. In her work with clients, Alexa values exploration of impactful early experiences where these patterns may have formed to help clients better understand themselves and their challenges. This includes exploring the impact of various social identities and marginalized experiences, like racism, fatphobia, immigration, misogyny, and ableism. 

In addition to exploring the past, Alexa emphasizes the importance of fully experiencing present emotions to process the information they are trying to communicate. Equipped with this insight, she works with clients to honor the way in which their old coping kept them safe in the past and create space to explore new ways to approach challenges. One of Alexa’s goals for all her clients is that through the therapeutic process, they learn to foster the same compassion toward themselves that they so readily offer to their loved ones.

In sessions, Alexa strives to create a space where all clients clients across the spectrums race, gender, sexuality and body size feel validated, heard, and empowered. Above all, Alexa values the development of a genuine, therapeutic relationship in which others feel safe to show up authentically, even in moments when that may feel especially messy or vulnerable. As a White, cis therapist, Alexa recognizes that the trust of clients who hold marginalized identities must be earned, and she does not take for granted the vulnerability involved in reaching out and sharing vulnerably with somebody new. Alexa has received feedback from past clients that therapy has felt consistently compassionate, warm, informal, and sensitive to the impact of various cultural identities. Previous clients have also remarked that Alexa is quite easy to talk to and that therapy often felt similar to confiding in a close friend.

Outside the therapy room, Alexa is a proud parent of three cats. She enjoys cooking, dancing, running to music, relaxing in front of a good TV show, and exploring new restaurants and coffee shops across the city.